Chapter Twenty-Four
I threw everything I had into my work at camp and the script. I only had two weeks left before I would potentially be back
in Christmas movie land, and I wanted to give it my all. I went to the library in Picton to write after camp, leaving my phone
in the car. I took all the longing I felt for Dave and put it into the script.
The second-to-last week of camp felt packed with the terror and longing of every camper who had invested all of their energies
into the performance of their young lives. Theatre kids hum and sing and dance when they’re nervous, like skittering squirrels.
So did Allegra and Noah, who had taken to doing contact-improv dance by the firepits as a form of stress relief. I sipped
an iced oat latte and watched as they danced toward every student arriving, most of whom joined in. Hailey arrived and stood
beside me, arms crossed.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” she asked with a smirk.
“I am a writer,” I said.
“Me too.” She laughed.
The humid summer air was extra thick with anticipation.
The campers were clinging to each other, offering long, dramatic hugs.
Their wrists were covered with friendship bracelets, their arms clasped around necks and waists as they embraced.
They scratched their mosquito-bitten legs while watching each other rehearse their monologues and film scripts.
With Katie in full pre-wedding meltdown and campers asking me if they could restart their film scripts because they were so legit shitty, Elise, you must let me start over!
, I had a lot of feelings to hold for others, so I tried to put my romantic confusion on the back burner and brought my attention
to Katie and several dozen drama kids.
I tried to allow us both the grace to really think about what we wanted. Did we just have chemistry and nostalgia? And would
that enough to go on if we weren’t compatible in real life, the day to day? I am usually very good at thinking about the practical
things in life. But with Dave, I felt distracted by even just the memory of our kissing. I would touch my lips and my eyes
would lose focus. How is it possible to think straight, with all that otherworldly desire?
The weekend before the end of camp and the wedding, Dave’s kid arrived for the week.
I introduced myself as his dad’s friend when they arrived. He looked like a shy, mini version of Dave.
Dave said, “This is Elise. She writes movies!” Finn was not impressed.
“I also love soccer,” I lied, motioning to the soccer ball in his arms. That got a smile.
I was aware, as I was chatting with him, that I had two competing instincts: I wanted to get to know Finn because he was important
to Dave. And I wanted to keep my distance because I remembered how terrible it can feel to think a parent is more interested
in someone other than you, especially when your time with that parent, who doesn’t have full custody, is finite.
“Well, I hope you have a fabulous day today, guys!”
“We’re going swimming at the lake with his cousins,” Dave said. He already kind of looked exhausted. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.
I spent Saturday polishing my script. I had promised myself that taking the summer off from work wouldn’t be a loss if I finished it. I was so close, closing in on the final ten pages. Why were endings always the most difficult scenes to write?
In a Christmas movie, the endings were the same—happy. Misunderstandings were explained, B stories wrapped up tidy, the couple
reunited after the inevitable third-act breakup. But my movie wasn’t about those tropes. It had to end in a way that would
leave the audience nodding their heads, saying, Yes, why didn’t I expect that? That was inevitable. That makes sense.
I wanted my movie to end on a feeling, to have the audience ponder the unanswerable question at the heart of the film’s narrative:
How do you stay whole when falling in love feels like being cracked open? But maybe I was fighting the happy ending. What
was so wrong with leaving the viewer feeling good, feeling hope? I was deleting pages of dialogue when the group text for
camp staff lit up.
Let’s all go to the drive-in! Ben texted. I’d assumed he was in the city like every other weekend. I was spending the day on a blanket, watching the horses
and fixing a scene in my movie script, taking breaks to eat cold black bean and corn salad or jump in the lake. My mother’s
hike had last longer than usual. I almost got concerned until finally I saw her car in the lot.
As I changed out of my sloppy writing clothes and into something reasonable for a drive-in theatre hang, I looked out the
window and realized my mom was still sitting in her car. I could hear muffled voices—she was having yet another long conversation
with Charles on the phone. I could hear the yelling, anyway, but I couldn’t make out any of the words.
Ben arrived, blasting Tame Impala into the night sky.
Dave was kicking a soccer ball around with Finn outside of his cabin, and I waved at them as I got in Ben’s car, carrying bug spray and a blanket.
I hoped that Dave could see that Allegra and Noah were in the back seat, but his face said otherwise.
Once we got on the road, I felt as though Ben and I were Mom and Dad, and Allegra and Noah our eccentric teenagers. Alan,
his husband, and Neve were going to meet us there. The drive-in was showing Jaws, a classic I hadn’t seen since I wrote a paper about it in film school. Allegra had never heard of it—which made me feel
a hundred years old, though Noah spent a good portion of the drive listing facts about how the movie was shot: “Did you know
the mechanical shark kept failing, and in the original script, you were to see it constantly, but because it failed, they
didn’t show the shark until an hour and twenty-one minutes into the film, which made it much more like Hitchcock, you know?”
The drive-in was just north of Bloomfield, surrounded by farmers’ fields, with a snack stand and two big screens that each
played two films per night, starting at sundown. We were one of the first cars to arrive. When we turned onto the dirt road
entrance, we bought our tickets from a cashier sitting in an old-fashioned vintage city bus. The whole evening felt like an
event in the best way. Ben was acting as good-natured tour guide, taking four camping chairs out of his trunk and giving me
the most comfortable-looking option. When we stood in line for Twizzlers, popcorn, and a classic Coke—the best movie snack
combination, in my opinion—he gave me a playful punch on the arm and said, “So, Neve likes you now. That’s a big deal.”
“I like her, too.”
“I’m still the best sibling, though, right?”
“Of course.”
“She thinks Dave still has a thing for you.”
“She does?” I said, trying to make my face blank.
“And she’s usually very protective of him. I think she’s never truly gotten over him but she loves her husband. He’s very committed to her and that’s what she needs. But yeah, anything going on there?”
I fixed my stare at the mini goldendoodle pawing at the ground in front of us.
“I’m actually . . . not sure, really. Remember when we used to actually put our relationship status to ‘it’s complicated’
on Facebook? It’s kind of . . . that.” That was the truth. I tried to read his face. He didn’t seem totally unconcerned but
he also didn’t appear to be all that upset.
“That is . . . vague but things can be vague sometimes. I get it.”
“You know, I never asked about the girl who posts photos of you all the time on Instagram.”
Ben laughed. “Well, that is also, uh, complicated. Or it was, until very recently. I thought we were friends with bennies,
and it turns out she thought we were more than that.”
“Oh.”
I was a little hurt to think about the early weeks of the summer, when I was texting him and he had a lover that whole time.
But we weren’t officially anything, so maybe that hurt was misplaced.
“But back to Dave?”
My inner monologue got loud and panicky, wondering how much was too much to share, and what I owed Ben, given our fake-date-then-sometimes-real-making-out
arrangement? But he, once again, seemed totally fine. When I came back down to earth, I realized he was looking at his phone
and scrolling through photos. He stopped, showing me a photo of a Spanish colonial-type bungalow. “This is the house I’ve
rented in LA. It’s mine September twenty-fifth.”
“Wow, it’s gorgeous. You lucked out.”
“It has lots of room . . . you know, the offer still stands.”
“What offer?”
“To come to LA with me. To shoot our shot. Write something together. Do some pitches. You’ve got to shop that new screenplay.
” The line started moving forward, and as he took a step in that direction, he also moved closer to me.
“We could be a dream team,” he said, in a flirtatious voice.
He put a hand on my waist and cocked an eyebrow in a question mark.
“Ben,” I said, stepping back a bit. He did look exceptionally handsome and sun-kissed, the daylight slowly fading behind him.
“I have a hard time reading you. Are you flirting with me right now?”
“I guess not very convincingly if you’re unsure.”
“I mean, the fake-dating thing, the constant talk about us being a power couple and working on something creative together.
I’m not really sure if your flirting is genuine. You know? Like do you actually like me? Or do you just see potential for
me to write a part for you? Like is it networking interest, or interest-interest?”
“The flirting hasn’t been insincere. I’m super into you.”
“You are?”
“I mean, the fact that we’re in the same business and that you’re just as much of a workaholic as I am, those things play
into my crush. Like, first it was how you handled that shitty director, and the way you heckled me when I did stand-up. I
love strong women and you are just, like, the epitome of strong. Do you think I couldn’t find another playwright to teach